South Dakota One of Least Safest States in U.S.

I would imagine the reason South Dakota ranks so low (41st) in this latest WalletHub study has everything to do with our agriculture-based economy. Farming is a dangerous profession. In a recent 24/7 Wall Street study of the most dangerous jobs in America, farming was number 8.

WalletHub's study results were determined by comparing all 50 states in 5 areas and this is where South Dakota ranked in each category:

1. Personal and Residential safety - 29th
2. Financial safety - 7th
3. Road safety - 30th
4. Workplace safety - 49th
5. Emergency Preparedness - 40th

Under each category, there were numerous sub-categories which looked at every kind of crime you can imagine, along with insurance, unemployment rates, credit scores, foreclosure, and poverty rates, debt, number of adults with "rainy day funds", job security, bankruptcies, pedestrian and motor accidents, DUIs, occupational injuries and illness, climate disasters, and the list goes on.

As you can probably tell the workplace safety and emergency preparedness categories really dragged our scores down, as only North Dakota did worse than South Dakota in the workplace safety area, coming in dead last - - if you'll pardon the expression. On the other hand, our next door neighbor, Minnesota did well across the spectrum.

So I guess we could all say, "Hey, at least we're not North Dakota!".

These are the Top 5 safest states to live in:

1. Minnesota
2. Vermont
3. Maine
4. Utah
5. Connecticut

You can see the entire study and all the data that was collected at WalletHub.

Sources: WalletHub and 24/7 Wall Street